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Jim Carroll

Music, Life and everything else

The silly season has begun

For the next 31 days, all manner of stories, notions and whims will end up getting headlines because there is nothing else to write about. In newspaper offices everywhere, there’s already a frantic look in the eyes of commissioning editors …

Jim Carroll

jimcarroll

Wed, Aug 1, 2007, 14:10

For the next 31 days, all manner of stories, notions and whims will end up getting headlines because there is nothing else to write about. In newspaper offices everywhere, there’s already a frantic look in the eyes of commissioning editors as they wonder how the hell they’re expected to fill pages with everyone who usually fills those pages – both writers and subjects – on holidays. Hacks try their hardest to look the other way and hope they won’t get sent to talk to those lads who landed the wild goat in Kerry. The silly season is officially in full swing.

It usually begins with that Fianna Fail tent at the Galway Races. Look, can we get over this now? It’s a tent. It serves smoked salmon, steak and other dishes. It costs a lot of money to get into it. It is full of people who are well disposed towards Fianna Fail (or who want to be well disposed towards Fianna Fail). It will probably feature that wax model of Bob the Builder which was lifted from the National Wax Museum. It’s like a church gate collection with horses.

Anyway, once that tent is taken down and used for the Electric Picnic (is it used at the Electric Picnic, isn’t it?), everything else is fair game. This morning, Morning Ireland managed to get about five minutes airtime out of some survey saying 400,000 extra voters would vote if they could vote by text or email. There was little said about the fact that the survey was commissioned by a company who deal in “a range of end-to-end communication solutions that tackle key pain points in your organisation” such as, well, text and email.

And I’m fairly sure I heard a report earlier on the News At One about university fees which I heard about two weeks ago on the same programme. Maybe those technical gremlins which have nixed a lot of RTE radio broadcasts in recent times are back.

Anyway, the silly season. It’s ruthless, people. Lets be careful out there – and please report your favourite silly season stories as they happen below.

(And no, silly season stories about the silly season like you have just read don’t count).

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